Ridiculous for ECB to ban players from PSL and deny the world it has helped to create - Chris Waters

One rule for one competition/country and one for another? It would appear so, unless one is oblivious to the apparent inflexibility and inconsistency therein.

Of course, the ECB is allowing players to take part in the IPL for a very good reason.

The tournament is now much too rich, too strong, too high-profile for them to any longer stand in their way; the ECB is also negotiating with IPL franchises over The Hundred sale.

India, itself, is the game’s great powerhouse. What India says goes; the rest bend a knee while muttering something about “three bags full, sir”.

But what kind of message is the ECB sending?

It cannot say to players, on the one hand, they are fine to go to the IPL to earn lucrative deals, but not to the PSL for the same or similar, while maintaining any vestige of credibility.

Either the governing body also bans players from the IPL, therefore every franchise competition that clashes with our season, which is not going to happen, or else it accepts market forces and a flexible compromise; small wonder that players and their representatives are said to be considering legal action concerning loss of earnings and restraint of trade over the PSL stance.

Ideally, there would be none of this piffle and each of the 18 first-class counties would line up at the start of each season with a full complement of players from which to choose, as used to be the case.

Sadly, the sport has changed so much in recent times that this is no longer possible; the clock cannot be turned back, and no one quite knows how this will pan out.

Why, there are franchise competitions now everywhere you look - some springing up in countries that probably don’t even exist.

No doubt intergalactic T20 will be the next big thing, once Musk takes over the universe, with Yorkshire’s Championship match against Northamptonshire at Wantage Road in some future freezing April unhelpfully clashing with Alpha Centauri Super Giants opening Cosmos Cup game against Sirius Sultans (see you in the fan zone...).

The point is that it would be absurd, at this stage, to deny the lie of the land, or the power that players wield collectively when it comes to the landscape.

It is said that the ECB fears losing players to the PSL, and to other leagues that clash with our season, such as in America, because it wants to protect the “fabric” of the county game. If that is so, then why has it been chipping away at that fabric for as long as most can recall?

Rather, the ECB wants to protect The Hundred and the T20 Blast, not the so-called fabric of the county game, which to most Yorkshire members means the County Championship (how long before that competition, incidentally, goes the way of the One-Day Cup).

The irony is that the ECB is effectively clamping down on players chasing the money when it does the same thing itself, with concepts like The Hundred that have impacted so seriously on the domestic schedule.

It seems to want to have its Yorkshire Fat Rascals and eat them (yum yuck).

One would have much more respect for the ECB if it simply acknowledged the climate it has helped to create, one in which cricket is now primarily about the money, instead of blocking players from maximising their own earning power.

Why should a player who did not get an IPL deal be prevented from going to the PSL for a bumper pay day, especially if his county acquiesces (the counties themselves, of course, have long been little more than glorified doormats).

The ECB should have the decency to live in the world it has helped to build, or else invite accusations of hypocrisy.

If one detects an air of gloom in these ramblings, one can only reply: “Well spotted.”

For the traditional game, if it has not yet vanished, is at least speeding in that direction, one unrecognisable from the first-class/Test match scene that most of us remember with affection.

Sadly, the warnings went unheeded and/or ignored.

Those who cautioned about the T20 golden goose being throttled were drowned out amid the sound of brass being counted.

Such talk was dismissed as old-fashioned and out-of-touch.

Not so out-of-touch, however, as to be incapable of regarding the scene with realism now.

Why won’t the ECB do the same?